The Murder Hole

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  The surprise, quickly ratcheting up into alarm, was that yesterday Jean had noted how tidy the bookshelf was, and yet today it was a mess. What? Had the ghost of the old man been making sure guests in his premises noticed his work? Repeating his routines from life was one thing, deliberately trying to get her attention was another, one that strained credibility.

  What unfortunately didn’t strain credibility was that someone living had searched the cottage. Jean inspected the rest of the room, but nothing else was disarranged. The flowers still stood on the table next to her canvas carryall . . .

  The smell of burning toast turned her lunge toward the table into a lunge toward the kitchen. Easing the toast onto a plate, she poured herself a cup of coffee and carried both to the table. While they cooled she inventoried everything in her bag. The large envelope with the photo of the Pitclachie Stone. A couple of file folders with copies and clippings. The biography of Crowley and several Nessieology books. Roger’s press release, the Omnium brochures tucked inside. She’d left her paper notebook sitting on the table last night, and it was still there, if not exactly where she’d left it at least not obviously elsewhere. Beside it sat her laptop, cold and silent.

  Okay. Jean munched her toast, washed it down with coffee, and pondered the possibilities. Maybe someone had come into the Lodge while she was gone yesterday and ransacked the shelves. Kirsty and Iris had to have a key, but why would one of them leave the shelves disarranged?

  Someone else with a key might have looked through the shelves, even taken something from them, but Jean couldn’t tell if anything were missing. Besides, the logical place to look for—whatever—would be in the locked room, which would argue either a second key or the sort of frustrated violence that would leave telltale marks on the door or the knob.

  Or, she thought with a chill that cooled the coffee on its way down her throat, had someone come into the house last night? The first sound to wake her had been that of a door shutting. Maybe she’d been more deeply asleep than she’d thought, and while she’d heard an intruder leave the cottage, she hadn’t heard him or her come in. Her sixth sense had responded only to the second round of noise, when the click of a door had been accompanied by footsteps and the creak of the floor. And yet there was no reason to assume the first sound hadn’t been the ghost, too. Maybe he’d just been warming up for the full manifestation.

  Besides, why would someone sneak into the cottage while it was occupied and run the risk of being caught? That was pretty bold, even if he or she knew that Jean had no better weapon than her toothbrush.

  She informed herself sternly that she had no evidence the mysterious searcher was after her things, let alone her person. In fact, she had no evidence there was a mysterious searcher at all. She might just as well throttle the galloping paranoia back to walking caution. That took a lot less energy.

  A second cup of life-affirming caffeine in one hand, Jean used the other to turn on the television. Only BBC Scotland was showing news, and that was the morning Gaelic broadcast. A shot of two yellow-jacketed policemen standing beside Temple Pier, the loch behind them smeared into watercolor by early morning haze, switched to a shot of a clean-cut young man wearing a suit and tie. His eyes, as large as those of a Japanese anime character, gazed into the camera as though expecting it to bite him. Whatever he was saying was drowned out by a voice translating it into soft but incomprehensible Gaelic syllables. Jean got the message, though, loud and clear.

  That was Detective Constable Gunn. He had to have a first name, but she’d never learned it during her brief contact with him and his superiors back in May. Those same superiors had sent him out today to hand the news people the standard line: The Northern Constabulary is making inquiries into the matter. Move along, move along, there’s nothing to see here.

  Had D.C.I. Cameron been dispatched from headquarters to deal with the matter of an exploding boat? Prying her gritted teeth far enough apart to fit in the rim of her coffee cup, Jean remembered the moment Alasdair Cameron had dragged her out of danger, his arm strong and solid around her waist. And the last time she’d seen him, over an Indian meal in Fort William, when she’d mentioned the Casket Letters and the Red Books of Westmarch. He’d not only recognized both references, he’d smiled his dry, reserved smile, and said, “The wardens of Westmarch were named Fairbairn. Ancestors of yours, I reckon.”

  Like Michael and Rebecca, she and Alasdair Cameron would have been a lot alike to begin with, wounded by duty and commitment, had there been a beginning. But that same evening he’d warned her off. Don’t go breaking my shell, woman. You might not like what’s inside. And they’d walked away from each other. Once burned, Jean thought, you tended to leap back hyper-ventilating from a sudden spurt of flame.

  More than once she’d told students complaining about a difficult assignment, Let it be a challenge to you. More than once in the last few weeks she’d wondered if Alasdair’s words had been just that, not a warning but a challenge. Maybe she would soon find out.

  Jean switched off the TV and rinsed off her dishes. Then she typed the notes from her interview with Roger into her laptop, even though the story he’d told her yesterday had been overrun by events. As for today, Kirsty had said Iris would show Jean around the garden “after breakfast.” Glancing at the kitchen clock, she decided that nine-thirty had to be after breakfast—and that Dempsey’s ten a.m. press junket had been cancelled.

  Just in case her paranoia was justified, she tucked her laptop into its case and the case into the carryall, and locked them both in the wardrobe in her bedroom after she dressed. Here we go again . . . Except, she reminded herself very firmly, this time she really was just an innocent bystander.

  On her way out, Jean tried the front door key in the lock of the locked room. But it was too big, and left a gleaming scratch on the age-darkened metal plate. Great, she thought, she’d been driven to vandalism. Even though there were other scratches around the keyhole, too, some quite recent. Had someone picked the lock? Leaning over, she peered through the keyhole to see nothing but darkness. Short of finding a ladder and dragging it around to the window, she wasn’t going to find out what was in that room.

  Forward momentum, then, as one of her favorite fictional characters was fond of saying. To which she could only add, and don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.

  Chapter Eight

  With a sound between a snort and a sigh, Jean shut the door of the Lodge and locked it. Maybe she should title her next article “Locking Doors for Fun and Profit.”

  The birds were singing, the sun was shining, a boat trailed a foaming white wake like the train of a bridal gown across the surface of the loch. You’d think there were no cares to be had in the world. You’d think there were no secret agendas, ones that impelled the bloody-minded not only to make threats but to also carry them out. Making long, purposeful strides across the courtyard, Jean imagined herself taller, stronger, a more formidable opponent . . . Dempsey had enemies, she told herself. All she had were irritants.

  The front door of the main house opened and decanted the Bouchards, dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch’s latest hiking-up-Fifth-Avenue gear. “Good morning,” Charles said with a gracious inclination of his head. Sophie adjusted the zipper on her jacket and said, “Pretty sunshine day. Good to walk.”

  “Yes, it’s a lovely morning.” Jean replied, not without a suspicious glance at the so-far innocent white clouds swanning overhead.

  The Bouchards went on down the terrace. Jean lingered to pet the calico cat, who was sunning itself on the low wall where Elvis had stood last night to watch the show—both acts of it. This beastie wasn’t in the mood to be elusive, but emitted a comfortable and comforting purr.

  All right! The slate flagstones rimming the terrace were carved with Pictish symbols, among them the gripping beast, Dempsey’s logo. The stylized shapes of bull, boar, eagle, and serpent reminded Jean of the drawings in the Book of Kells and other old Celtic Bibles. Which led her back aro
und to beasts from Revelations or from the loch or both. Brushing away a scattering of broom petals like a drift of gold flakes, she crouched down for a better look.

  A tattoo of footsteps announced Kirsty, walking around the base of the tower with her maiden—well, if Iris was not a maiden, at least permanently unmarried—aunt at her side. Iris was not only the taller of the two, her posture made a regimental sergeant major look slouched. Kirsty was sidling along with her head tilted up, speaking in a voice that made up in vehemence what it lacked in volume. Today her hair was pulled tightly back from her face, sharpening its curves into angles. Iris’s face was already angular. Her expression was the same as it had been on the television screen two nights ago, dealing sternly with the facts, thank you, not with anything as disreputable as fancy.

  The two women stopped in the corner where the tower met the house, beside a small arched doorway. Kirsty’s voice rose. “Roger’s is just another expedition!”

  “It wasn’t that even before he got his boat blown up last night. Good riddance, I’m thinking.”

  “How can you go saying that? Jonathan Paisley has been missing since the explosion!”

  Jean winced. So it was too late for angelic intervention. Poor Jonathan. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Not to speak ill of—of him.” Iris made a gesture that came close to patting Kirsty’s head. “But it just goes to show how Roger Dempsey will do anything, will sacrifice anyone, to further his ambitions. The other lad, the American, his back wants watching, I should think. If Roger had the least bit of respect, he would take his circus and go away home.”

  “He’s not after going home, he’s making plans to get on with the ground survey.”

  “How did . . . Ah. I see. That phone call. That was the American lad, was it?”

  “His name is Brendan Gilstrap,” said Kirsty, her chin taking on that stubborn tilt Jean had seen all too often in her students. “And aye, I went walking down to hear the music with him last night. Dinna go tarring him with the brush you’re using on Roger.”

  “Roger’s tarred himself. He needs no help from me. As for this Brendan, I promised your mum I’d look after you, considering what happened in Glasgow and all. Hanging about with Dempsey and his sort—no, I don’t think you’ll be doing that. I don’t think so at all.”

  Silence, except for the wind in the shrubbery and Jean’s shoes making stealthy tracks away from the scene before the women realized they hadn’t been alone. There you go, she thought. The classic story of a young woman with an unsuitable boyfriend. Or unsuitable by Iris’s standards. Her own mother had been an American—surely that wasn’t the issue. Did Iris disapprove of monster-hunters in general or of Roger in particular, especially now that he had attracted violence?

  And, parenthetically, what had happened with Kirsty in Glasgow that she had been more or less exiled here? Jean stopped at the far end of the terrace, straightened from her crouch, and spared a thought for youth, death, and solitude.

  Then she focused on the vista before her. Plants and flowers of every color and description spilled up the hillside behind the house, bulged out across gravel paths, and strained against a fence. Drops of dew glinted like jewels tucked away in the foliage. Beyond a gate lay open pasture, grass short as a putting green, dotted with the gray of—oh, those lumps weren’t rocks, they were sheep. That explained the well-manicured lawn. Further up the hill the open fields were splotched with the dark green of heather and the pink-purple of foxgloves.

  At the crest of the hill several Scots pines stood in solitary splendor, their limbs calligraphy against the mountainside beyond. The fence encircling them was fringed by what looked like large, lush Boston ferns but were actually bracken, fronds rippling in the wind. The Bouchards stood there scrutinizing a piece of paper.

  “Good morning, Miss Fairbairn,” called Iris’s deep voice from behind Jean’s back.

  She probably realized Jean had overheard her conversation with Kirsty, but courtesy consisted of mutual denial. Assuming a guileless smile, Jean turned around. “Good morning, Miss Mackintosh.”

  Iris’s khaki and wool-clad form marched on past, over the edge of the terrace and onto the gravel garden path. “I hope the Lodge is all right for you.”

  “I’m enjoying the space,” said Jean, scurrying to catch up. “I’m curious, though—why is one of the upper rooms locked?”

  “Oh that. It’s too small for a bedroom so I use it as a lumber room for the occasional old family possession.”

  Possession was the right word, thought Jean. But she’d only alienate her subject by pointing out that most B&B owners were happy to rent out rooms barely large enough for a bed. “Were you or Kirsty looking for a book in the Lodge yesterday afternoon? I found the shelves disarranged this morning.”

  Iris stopped dead in the path. Jean skidded to a halt behind her. Her nose was so close to the much taller Iris’s knitted cardigan that she caught a whiff of bacon, revealing who had cooked the breakfast she’d skipped.

  “I’ll have Kirsty set them to rights.” Iris’s t’s were honed to sharp points.

  “No problem, I just wondered . . .”

  Iris started off again, leaving Jean to sidle along the way Kirsty had, head cocked upward. Iris hadn’t answered the question, had she? Jean went on, “I’d like to ask you about . . .”

  “My garden,” stated Iris. She stopped at the gate, made an about-face, and launched into a botanical litany. Jean barely had time to whip out her notebook.

  Meadow sweet. Thyme. Flag iris, origin of the fleur de lis of France and its Auld Alliance with Scotland. St. John’s wort, almost a weed in Jean’s garden in Texas. Soapwort, woundwort, ragwort—known as Stinking Willy after the infamous William, Duke of Cumberland, the victor at Culloden. Prickly purple thistles, the symbol of Scotland. Wild roses, woodruff, silverweed, vetch, eyebright. More broom. The Bonny, Bonny Broom was one of Hugh’s folk songs.

  Iris’s face softened with both affection and pride, as though she talked about grandchildren. She pointed out the boxwood hedges, box being the clan badge of the Mackintoshes, and indicated the elder trees rising at the back of the house and the rowans at the front, that particular arrangement guarding against witches. Jean wanted to comment that it had apparently not guarded against Crowley, but thought better of it—Iris had already segued into plant dyes, wool, spinning and knitting.

  A knitter herself, Jean asked, “Do you use the wool from your own sheep?”

  Iris gazed out at the fuzzy gray blobs that dotted the field. “Yes, I do. And I conduct classes. Cottage industries, mind you, make more ecological sense than these giant factories. Do you fancy a look at the Pitclachie Stone?”

  “Yes, please.” Jean’s head was spinning. She thrust her notebook into her bag and followed.

  Iris headed through the gate and up a muddy path, her boots splashing through the puddles. With her not-so-sturdy but thankfully flat shoes, Jean played hopscotch with the dryer patches. She waited next to the corrugated prints of the Bouchards’ hiking boots while Iris unlatched the gate in the deer fence and pushed it open. An inquisitive branch of the bracken brushed against Jean’s ankle, sending a creeping sensation up her leg.

  Stepping into the pine glade was like stepping into a remote, mysterious place out of another century, or even another world. Even the song of the birds seemed muted. No one else was there—the French couple had either not gone into the enclosure at all or had walked through it and out the gate on the far side.

  The trees murmured in the wind and their shadows rippled over the shape that stood beneath them, as though shadow itself could erode like water. But the slab of stone had been deliberately broken, not eroded. It rose from a pile of smooth silver rocks stained by whorls of gold and gray lichen, lonely and yet dignified. Jean stepped toward it reverently.

  The Stone was taller than she’d thought from its photo, as high as her chest. There was no way of knowing how high it had stood when complete, b
ut the stump was solid enough to have supported several more feet of stone. She traced the carved horse’s head with her forefinger, set her fingertips into the shallower line beneath, then laid her hand flat on the unmarked surface to the side. The rock harbored a chill that was deeper than mere cold, sending a frisson up her arm, and felt like fine-grained sandpaper against her skin. The small hole looked like a mouth shaped in an O of sorrow.

  Without quite realizing what she was doing, Jean stooped and peered through the hole, just as she’d peeped through the keyhole of the locked door. She saw merely the green and gold rush of light and shadow, no glimpses of ancient times or other dimensions. Her sixth sense remained dormant. Whatever flicker of ghostly energy she’d felt last night didn’t seem to have emanated from here. She was almost disappointed.

  Straightening, she brushed her fingertips across the broken edge, gingerly, but it wasn’t sharp enough to cut. Only then did she remember Iris was standing behind her. “How did the Stone get broken?” she asked in a voice that was almost a whisper.

  “I don’t know. This piece of it was lying here amidst the bracken when I was a child. When I returned to Pitclachie in the seventies, after my father’s death, I had it erected. Seemed the least I could do to honor the ancient people who once lived here.” Iris’s drill-sergeant voice softened, as though she, too, sensed the weight of time in this place. “Nomenclature can be a bit dodgy as evidence, I know, but the word ‘Pit-clachie’ does suggest that the Stone was a local landmark many centuries ago. As a boundary marker of the old kingdom of Fidach, perhaps.”